Dylan scowled at him. "You knocked me out again."
"For the last time," he said, his voice low, apologetic.
He killed the engine and opened the driver side door. He was alone up front, no sign of the two others who were supposed to be riding along. The ones who'd been ordered to take care of the other "loose ends" while Rio personally took care of her.
God, the thought of her mom coming in contact with the kind of dangerous inpiduals that Rio was apparently associated with made her shake with anxiety. Her mother was dealing with enough as it was; Dylan didn't want her anywhere near this dark new reality.
Dylan wondered how fast Rio would catch her if she tried to bolt out of the SUV. If she could get a large enough lead, she might be able to make a run for the subway station into Midtown where the hospital was. But who was she kidding? Rio had tracked her from Jicin to Prague. Finding her in Manhattan might prove a challenge for him...for all of about thirty seconds.
But damn it, she needed to see her mom. She needed to be with her, at her bedside, and see her face so she could know for certain that she was okay.
Please Lord, let her be okay.
"I thought you were going to have company for this trip," Dylan said, hoping by some miracle there had been a change of plans and Rio's friends had stayed behind. "What happened to the other guys who were supposed to come with you?"
"I dropped them off in the city. They didn't need to be here with us. They'll report back to me when they're finished."
"When they're finished terrorizing a bunch of innocent people, you mean? How do you know your vampire buddies won't decide to take a little blood donation along with the memories they're going to steal?"
"They have a specific mission, and they'll adhere to it."
She looked into the smoky topaz eyes staring back at her in the mirror. "Just like you, right?"
"Just like me." He got out of the vehicle and came to the back to grab her backpack and messenger bag from the seat beside her. "Come on, Dylan. We don't have a lot of time to wrap this up."
When she didn't move, he reached in and startled her with a gentle stroke of her cheek. "Come on. Let's get inside now. Everything's going to be all right."
She climbed out of the leather seat and walked up the concrete steps with him to her building's front door. Rio handed her the keys from out of her bag. Dylan turned the entryway lock and stepped inside the stale-smelling, robin's egg blue vestibule, feeling like she hadn't been home in ten years.
"My apartment's on the second floor," she murmured, but then Rio probably already knew that. He followed close behind her as the two of them climbed the stairs up to her hole-in-the-wall place at the back of the common hallway.
She unlocked the door and Rio walked in ahead of her, keeping her in back of him as though he were accustomed to entering dangerous places and doing it at the front of the line. He was a warrior, all right. If his cautious demeanor and immense size didn't confirm it, the big gun he was concealing in the back waistband of his black cargo pants would have done so in spades. She watched as he checked out the place, pausing next to a computer workstation that sat on a small writing desk in the corner.>It wasn't until after he'd said it that Rio realized he was using the word "we" when talking about the warriors and their goals. He was including himself in his thinking about the Order. More than that, he was actually starting to feel a part of the whole again - a functioning, valid member - as he stood there with Lucan and the others, making plans, talking strategy.
It felt good, in fact.
Maybe there still could be a place for him here after all. He was a mess and he'd made some mistakes, but maybe he could get back to what he was before.
He was still reaching out for that hope as a little beep started up on one of Gideon's monitoring stations for the compound. The warrior wheeled over to the computer, frowning.
"What is it?" Lucan asked.
"I'm picking up an active cell phone signal here in the compound - not one of ours," he replied, then looked over at Rio. "It's outbound, originating from your quarters."
Dylan.
"Holy fuck," Rio ground out, anger spiking - at himself and at her. "She said she didn't have one on her."
Goddamn it. Dylan had lied to him.
And if he'd had his eye on the ball like he should, he would have body-searched her from head to toe before he so much as thought about taking the female at her word.
A reporter with a cell phone in her possession. For all he knew she could be sitting in his apartments phoning in everything she'd seen and heard to CNN - exposing the Breed to the humans and doing it right under his fucking nose.
"There was nothing in her bags to indicate she had a cell with her," Rio muttered, a feeble excuse and he knew it. "Damn it, I should have checked her over."
Gideon typed something on one of his many control panels. "I can throw up some interference, shut down the signal."
"Do it," Lucan said. Then, to Rio: "We've got some loose ends that need to be snipped, my man. Including the one down the hall in your quarters."